Blocks of Continuity/Body, Image and Algorithm
koosil-ja/danceKUMIKO
Dance Theater Workshop
New York, NY
March 3, 2010
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
When Generation Wii makes whatever they will call their modern dance, Koosil-ja may become one of their avatars. If you take her “Blocks of Continuity/Body, Image and Algorithm” solely as a performance, it’s not very compelling. But as a raw idea, it has the interest of a nascent concept and purity of purpose that could have been what it felt like to watch the early work of Cunningham and Cage.
Koosil-ja is Japanese born, of Korean descent. She studied with Merce Cunningham and danced in New York in the eighties before establishing herself as an independent dancemaker. Her current interest is dance and digital media, giving rise to this project.
The evening had little set choreography; the movement was basic and minimal. It seemed less choreography than a set of rules. The performance was in two sections with a brief setup in between. As we entered, there were banks of computers on a long table at the front of the stage, their operators sitting with their backs to us. Monitors in varying sizes hung from the gridding above in the ghostly blue.
During the first section, “Movement Research,” the dancers worked with what Koosil-ja calls “Live Processing,” movement that is reactive to outside stimuli. Large screens held groups of three smaller video feeds of kitsch advertisements, photos of paintings, traditional Asian dance. Three dancers, Melissa Guerrero, Ava Heller and Elise Knudson, reproduced sections of what they saw, mixing from all sources. It looked like playing Wii Fit, or children imitating the boob tube and went on for a long while, to the point of becoming dreamlike.
Things got even more geekazoid. The lights came up. Geoff Gersh had been playing guitar and electronics at the back throughout the first section at a low threatening rumble. He walked to the front, sat in a chair and tucked up his curly brown mane.
David Or, the production manager of the animation we were about to see, squirted electrolytic fluid on Gersh’s scalp and strapped a headband on him. He calmly explained how Gersh’s brainwaves from meditation would power a Rube Goldberg contraption. It had a soft mallet at its end that gained enough mojo from Gersh’s thoughts to thump the wall. Through it all, Or seemed remarkably like the mad scientist from the Bugs Bunny episode with the furry tooth monster – or Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.
The dancers also strapped on sensors. On the three large monitors, the dancers’ movements controlled three avatars: Desire – a female dancer, Hack – a young male thief, and Strata – an older black bum, who seemed straight out of Nintendo gaming profiles. The stereotypes were also crude.
The dancers and technicians synchronized with the same ritual throughout the performance: “Standing by,” “Ready” “Go.” The avatars projected on the monitors were now controlled by the dancers’ movements, transmitted by the sensors. The dancers returned to what they were doing in the first section – Live Processing the found video – and those movements now controlled the animations – all to the accompaniment of Gersh’s extra-sensory thumping.
Towards the end, Knudson started to parse the video stream by speaking rather than movement, and finally the dancers imitated one of the avatars. They reproduced Desire’s movements that they were creating by their own movement – an elegant study in recursion. It was Dance-dork nirvana.
Watching the animation was similar to watching a video game – the design is much the same. The avatars weren’t able to do a heck of a lot – they explored their environments, got up, sat down, ran down the street, picked things up. The dancers’ movements also weren’t analogous to the avatars’; an arm that moved on a dancer didn’t necessarily produce an arm movement on the screens. But to present James Cameron technology on a Housing Works budget was an achievement.
Was it a science project or a performance? You decide. The more interesting question is, now that this technology is within reach of dance makers, what do we do with it?
copyright © 2010 by Leigh Witchel
Photos by Yi-Chun Wu
Top: Ava Heller, Elise Knudson
Bottom: Sitting at table (L to R) Robert Ramirez, Koosil-ja, Madeline Best.
Standing behind table: Melissa Guerrero, Ava Heller, Elise Knudson
